THE FRENCH EXILES IN EUROPE 69 



the burghers built them a large house on the common, 

 long known as little Picardya. In 1693 the city was Scotland 

 charged to the amount of two thousand marks for the 

 support of the manufactory. Others worked in silk, and 

 planted mulberry-gardens on the hill slopes. Helped by 

 the public alms at first, these Pieard exiles fared pros- 

 perously, and maintained their native speech and man- 

 ners, living in a house, itself of French fashion, until the 

 middle of the eighteenth century. 



The gentry and artisans formed the bulk of the French 

 immigrants to England. The agricultural classes pre- 

 ferred Germany, Holland and Sweden, which were less 

 thickly peopled. It was the craftsman, carrying his 

 means of support in his hands or in his brain, that 

 enriched England and did much to make the little island 

 the workshop as well as the counting-house of the world. 

 A strong contrast these French craftsmen were to the 

 English workmen, who belonged in general to a rougher 

 and less skilled type ; who needed the greater refinement 

 and joyousness of the newcomers as much as the Puritaus 

 did in New England ; and who on the whole received the 

 foreigners quite as hospitably as could be expected. 



IV 



Most heartily were the persecuted fugitives welcomed professional 

 in the various countries to which they fled. At Dord- Enrichment 

 recht, in Holland, the burghers ''received them as kins- 

 folk into their houses, cared for them as for their children, 

 and put them in the way of earning honourably their 

 bread," while the magistrates loaded them with privileges 

 and pensions. This was characteristic of the countries 

 generally. The French Protestant ministers and men of 

 letters, many of them eminent for learning, enriched 

 Holland by their presence. It was the artisan and agri- 

 cultural class that chiefly pushed on further. Colonies 

 escaped through the German border to the north, and the 

 immigration to Hamburg embarrassed that great city by 



